The present application discloses systems and methods that improve the distribution capabilities, the ease of development, and the integration of services and applications associated with a payment processing system.
Services and applications associated with a payment processing system have traditionally been implemented using a “Silo Framework.” In a Silo Framework, each service and application independently implements each layer of the service and each service individually integrates with the payment processing network. For example, each service or application implemented using a Silo Framework uses their own firewall layer, database layer, and connection interfaces to the internet, telecommunication networks, and payment processing networks.
Many inefficiencies exist when using a Silo Framework to implement services and applications. As services and applications are developed piecemeal over time, each independently implemented layer of a silo creates unnecessary redundancy between the services and applications. For example, each service may maintain its own firewall, database resources, and other modules used to provide the service. This phenomenon occurs even if multiple layers of the silos accomplish the same basic function for each service and application. Not only is this an efficient use of development resources, but it also makes it more difficult to effectively integrate various services and applications. Additionally, differences between various implementations of the layers inevitably develop over time. As a result, there is often no single common interface that devices can use to access these various services and applications. Consequently, it is more difficult for new services to be developed and adopted by users. It is also more difficult to integrate various services because there is no common way that all of these services carry out common tasks. As a result, implementing new combinations of various services can be difficult and potentially time-consuming.
Another related problem that with the Silo Framework is that when a single change to more than one service is to be made, each service may have to have its infrastructure individually modified. For example, if some services want to adopt support for a new technology, then each affected service would have to make the necessary adjustments to accommodate the new technology. This becomes quite burdensome as the number of affected services grows. As a result, the process of updating and maintaining services may become slower and potentially may not happen at all.
Yet another problem with the Silo Framework is that it becomes cumbersome to expand access to a payment processing network to a wide variety of access points, because each service or application has to be individually configured to support each new means of access. Historically, this problem has not been much of an issue, because access to a payment processing system has typically been controlled by a limited number of processing parties that act as the gatekeepers to the payment processing system. These processing parties work with issuers and acquirers to provide access to a payment processing system and generally use a dedicated network connection to access the payment processing system.
Over time, all of these inefficiencies have become more significant. Not only has the number of new services, applications, and features increased over time, but there is also a growing need to be able to access these services and applications over channels beyond the ones controlled by the limited number of processing parties. As the number of services and applications increase along with the number of channels used to access these services, the inefficiencies of the Silo Framework becomes more and more significant. As a result of all of this, a new framework is needed to provide access to a payment processing system and to provide various services and applications associated with payment processing systems.
These problems, as well as other problems, are addressed by embodiments of the present invention.